|
12. THE SIXTH HOUR
Arthur Latchloose wandered alone through a mall of happy Christmas shoppers. Something heavy was pressing on his heart-some sort of recent loss-but he couldn't put his finger on it.
The heavy flow of pedestrian traffic took him along with it. He just kept walking, numbly, until the mall traffic spilled out through wide doors, out onto a sidewalk where cars sat waiting at the curb to pick people up. Arthur didn't see anyone waiting to pick him up, so he pulled his collar up and jammed his hands in his pockets. The cold still got to his ears and hands, but less painfully, as he walked away from the mall. He walked and walked, until he was in a strange neighborhood. The streets got smaller and less important. Commercial zoning gave way to private residences in a fairly poor neighborhood where Arthur began to watch his back as he walked past housing projects and arid playgrounds where broken swing sets hung askance over flooded sand pits.
Oddly, though it had been midday, now it was getting to be dusk. Pretty soon, Arthur was walking down curving streets with run-down houses, with lots of broken toys on arid lawns, and jacked-up cars without wheels sitting on blocks. As before, he felt some deep force pushing him along, the way the current in a river pushes floating objects out to sea.
He came to a nondescript little green stucco house with a broken light over the simple concrete steps leading to a battered brown door. He knocked on the door, and felt it yield. He heard a television commercial blaring out the virtues of buying a set of four tires on sale, wrapped around a sentimental and phony Christmas theme.
"It's unlocked," a man's voice called out. The voice was harsh, almost angry, and certainly impatient.
Arthur stepped into a musty living room that was filled with the soft chatter of an ongoing football game. There he saw a large young man sprawled back on the couch, watching television. The young man's appearance matched the disheveled look of the house, and Arthur wrinkled his nose at a faint but noticeable concert of bad smells. "Whew," Arthur said, "why don't you open the windows and air this place out."
The young man turned a haggard and unshaven face toward Arthur. His dark eyes blazed with anger, and he pointed at Arthur with a grimy hand holding a beer can. "Not one minute are you in here, and already you are critical. Why did you have to come here and bother us?"
Arthur stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets, shocked at the conditions around him. He heard a baby squalling upstairs. A glance up the rickety stairs toward a dimly glowing hallway bulb, and a litter of cheap plastic toys, told him there was a family life going on here, but what kind? "How many children do you have now?" he asked.
"Two girls. What's it to you?" The young man wouldn't avert his eyes from a touchdown in progress. He balled his free fist and yelled "Yeah!" He put the beer down and clapped with meaty yellow-brown hands. Arthur could see he'd put on weight, and he didn't remember the grime around those knuckles. The boy looked at him and said: "I moved thousands of miles to get away from you, you miserable old codger. I hate you, you know? You and that blasted bank of yours, and your money."
"I could send you some money," Arthur suggested, "to help out."
"Don't bother. We've gotten along fine without your money for years. No reason to change things now."
Arthur felt sick inside. "Look, I know I was always pushing you, and now I understand the more I pushed, the more you pushed back, pushed away."
The boy cracked open another beer, took a big swig, and wiped foam from his lip with a swipe of a sweater-clad arm. His sweater, his jeans, and his shoes all looked as if they had not been cleaned in months.
A woman's voice called from upstairs. "Is someone down there, honey, or are you talking to the TV again?"
"Just an old bum," the boy said. "It's nobody." He looked at Arthur with a glint of hatred in his eyes, and a malevolent curl of the lip. Every word that came out cut like a knife. "You wanted me to be like you. You had no use for who I was, or what I wanted to be. You even took my books away, my toys away, and wouldn't let me play with the other kids, for fear that I would turn into just a normal, happy kid. You wanted to create a miserable, money-counting old banker like yourself. You wanted me to be sixty years old by the time I was ten, you miserable old fool. That's why I moved as far away as I could, and why you never hear from me." He rose, hefting an already sizeable tire around his waist. It was clear he wanted to usher Arthur to the door. Looming over him, with his arms at his side making fists, he almost physically pushed Arthur toward the door. Arthur felt a moment of terror in addition to his revulsion and soul-ache as he smelled the blast of beer and chalky breath, not to mention the stale sweat and cold motor oil ingrained in the tortured weave of that cheap wool sweater fabric. The boys' unbrushed, greenish-brown teeth spat out more words, and Arthur could only watch his lips move up and down, weaving webs of whitish spittle. "You did everything you could to make me and Mary feel worthless, and Mom died because of the way you kept putting everybody down, you miserable worthless old curmudgeon. Well, this isn't much, but it's all we've got, and I tell you we are a million times happier than I ever was around you. Get out of my house and don't ever show your ugly face here again!"
A moment later, Arthur stood outside in the dark and cold, staring at the closed door. The loud slam of the door, and the rattling of a chain lock and a deadbolt, still echoed around his shocked head. On the door hung a cheap plastic Christmas wreath. In the wreath was a sun-faded silk banner that read "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" from two years earlier. A white plastic candle with a broken bulb hung upside down from it, as did a green electric cord that had been cut, probably by some neighborhood vandal.
"My God, what have I done?" Arthur wailed out loud as he stumbled from the porch and into the strange city he did not know. "How is it possible? Why didn't I see it? Why didn't I know?"
He wandered blindly along wintry streets and alleys, until he came to a major intersection. There, above a corner drugstore with bright window displays, was a sort of stainless steel Diner Deco entablature that curved around the top on both sides. Embedded in blue and pink neon in the center, over the doors, was a large electronic clock, which now churned out a series of rock 'n roll riffs-seven of them, to be exact. The watch in his pocket seemed to be churning excitedly right along.
|
